Real estate websites: Let’s get real

Property listing websites are less effective in 2022 than they were in the past. Especially if you want to attract and convert more visitors into mandates.

After all, it’s not buyers and real estate search functionality you need, but sellers.

Here are 3 reasons why you might need to reconsider your website focus and strategy in 2022:

1.) You want your real estate website to attract sellers

The agency that controls the stock, controls the market.

Simply listing your property stock on a real estate website gets you buyers and not sellers. Your website is more than a storefront for the stock you are marketing, it’s also a place to showcase what makes your agency different, a space to show sellers how you could market their properties, and to position yourself as the authority in your local markets.

Real estate website traffic is expected to decrease by 8% in 2022 because people tend to avoid visiting real estate websites (when they could view all the available stock in the market by simply visiting any one of the popular property portals).

2.) You want your real estate website to provide real value for users

Services your agency offers (such as free valuations) provide website visitors with real and tangible benefits by helping them know whether selling right now is in their best interest.

This feature should be front and centre on your website. Yet, many real estate websites place their listings at the core of their sites, and place their services in separate menus or at the base of their home page.

Great real estate websites provide more value than simply housing listings, but also contain neighbourhood insights: which schools are in the area, what kinds of homes dominate the market, and common events (like street fairs and farmers markets).

3.) You want your real estate website to build trust to generate leads for your real estate agency in the future

Visitors want useful information on real estate sites. They don’t care about how pretty the website looks and they won’t stay on a real estate website that doesn’t provide real value to them.

A lack of real and original content (or over-reliance on stock photos and press release material) suggests to visitors that you’re not really as clued up on the local market as they believe you should be. After all, selling a home requires a serious financial commitment from a homeowner.

And real estate sites that fail to solve real problems and offer real value do not generate real leads and real mandates for real estate agents, regardless of the real estate website design or performance of their search functions.

This does not apply to every real estate agency, but if this is what you’re offering visitors – then it’s time to change the way your business operates in 2022.

Now that we’ve identified why you should revisit your website strategy, we’re going to list 5 things your website needs to compete in 2022 for organic visitors searching for a solution to their real estate problems.

1 Google Reviews and Testimonials (preferably directly linked from your Google Business profile)

2 An active and relevant blog with keyword- and SEO-optimised content (the best real estate websites already do this and that’s the reason why they dominate across the web, whether they operate in Cape Town in the Western Cape, or Johannesburg in Gauteng)

3 Keywords and Meta Descriptions aligned with the terms you want your website to rank for (and which are being searched for)

4 A mobile-first website due to the bulk of website traffic coming from mobile devices (again, the best real estate websites have long since figured this out)

5 User-friendly real estate website forms that allow you to convert a visitor into a lead (and score even more points if your forms are linked to a real estate focused CRM with an autoreply to acknowledge new leads)

When you change your real estate website strategy from a listing site to a services and content-rich experience, this fresh approach will increase the likelihood of getting more clients.

Contact us today for an initial consultation to see how we can help you create a better user experience that drives traffic back to your agency and helps you convert more of that traffic into seller leads.

Want to know how your real estate website stacks up against your competitors’?

Take our 20-second audit today and set up an initial consultation to see how we can help you create a better user experience that drives traffic back to your agency and helps you convert more of that traffic into seller leads.